Programming from the Ground Up

Author(s) : Jonathan Bartlett
Edited by : Dominick Bruno, Jr.
ISBN : 0975283847
Paperback : 328 pages
Free License : GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version
Publication Date : July 2004
Publisher : Bartlett Publishing

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Book excerpts:

In this era of visual programming and an ever-increasing rate of project requirements, the thinking of learning assembly language doesn't ring a bell as loud as it did a decade ago. Today a significant percentage of people who make a living from writing codes does so without really bothering on what is really happening behind those cool buttons and windows. Perhaps they just too busy. Or perhaps they don't feel an urging need just like the early days of PCs when difference in the number of lines or the implementation of particular algorithms can result in a faster and more efficient program. Today's PCs are much faster with more memory and disk capacity. And they certainly are more forgiving.

Yet for every people who happened to write lines of codes, either as a hobby or a living, there is always a need to know on how the computer actually works underneath. Knowing how the computer works from a bare-metal standpoint is often the difference between top-level programmers and programmers who can never quite master their art. And this is where this book is coming at.

This book teaches assembly language for x86 processors and the GNU/Linux operating system. It is an introductory book, not a reference book. It is therefore not suitable by itself to learn how to professionally program in x86 assembly language, as some details have been left out to make the learning process smoother. The point of the book is to help the student understand how assembly language and computer programming works, not to be a reference to the subject. Reference information about a particular processor can be obtained by contacting the company which makes it.

Most introductory books on programming tend to pass over topics that are difficult even though they are important. This book will take readers through the difficult issues because that is the only way to move on to masterful programming.

The goal is to take readers from knowing nothing about programming to understanding how to think, write, and learn like a programmer. This book won't teach everything, but readers will have a background for how everything fits together. At the end of this book, readers should be able to do the following:
- understand how a program works and interacts with other programs
- read other people's programs and learn how they work
- learn new programming languages quickly
- learn advanced concepts in computer science quickly

Intended Audience:

This book assumes the reader has never programmed before, and introduces many topics skipped by other similar books, including memory management, debugging, interfacing with C, dynamic libraries, and even a bit on GUI programming.

Reviews:

Joel Spolsky, JoelOnSoftware.com


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